In the past, there have been only a few designs relating to semi-circular seating arrangements for children around a teacher or other education provider. The only prior patented design of a similar nature can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,366,415 issued to J. W. Cooper in which a semi-circular table is built for the older school child and has seats which permanently attached to the table by providing steel tubing depending between pairs of seats and extending towards the center of the table. The steel tubing is attached to the outer periphery of the underside of the table top. Thus, the chairs cannot move out of place and fewer legs are left to clean around and under by maintenance personnel. Further a blackboard or corkboard for messages may be attached directly to one corner of the table top. However, In the Cooper design, the seats are not integral to the tabletop, so the design is not suited to young children, especially toddlers.
However, by far the most readily available product in the market place consists of a semi-circular table, or other circular segment portion, which allows for the placement of standard detached chairs to be arranged around its periphery. Although this is suitable for school aged children, it would not keep busy, antsy preschoolers happily in place. They would move the chairs all over the place and not necessarily sit in them for extended periods because they have very short attention spans of a minute or less.
Most recently, sometime ago a design was developed by the inventor of the instant invention wherein a substantially rectangular table top was outfitted with a plurality of seats for up to eight children. A small semi-circle cut out was made for the teacher or day care worker. In this design, a Formica type table top was used with hard molded drop in seats which were secured to corresponding apertures in the table top. Such a design was extremely popular with educators and caretakers of very young children in the age range of approximately 5 to 24 months. Table top arrangements were available to seat 4, 6 or 8 children.
Thus, nowhere in the prior is seen a table top with a plurality of integral seats arranged in a semi-circular fashion within a semicircular table top. Nor is there seen anywhere in the prior art a semicircular, rotomolded table top with a plurality of seats which has the seats integral to the table top for ease of manufacture and cleaning by the user and their attendant maintenance personnel.